For this exhibition, I chose to celebrate artists' work featured in the Besthoff collection and public parks and throughways, I hope to pay tribute to artists whose work has crossed over from patrons to the public realm, further engaging our unique city and poetic way of life.
Keith Perelli Artist Stateemnt
City Park conjures up many memories for most New Orleanians. For me, as a descendant of Achille Perelli, a founder of the New Orleans Art Guild and one of the early artists featured in the Isaac Delgado collection and whose name is featured within the museum entablature, City Park has always been an inspiration to my work and connection to New Orleans. Whether it be a family tradition of snapping photos at the Lion sculptures at the Peristyle, or picnicking in the park, City Park is more than a unique feature of our landscape, it’s a place of our shared experiences and memories that helps link New Orleans culture.
The works in this show pay tribute to my early fascination with the museum and the fantastic sculptures and paintings that mystified me as a child and later as an aspiring artist eager to understand technique and process. From the larger than life eroticism of Bourdelle’s Hercules on the museum steps or the painterly brushwork of Sargent, I owe much of my desire to be an artist to my family bringing me to the park and museum. Once in a lifetime NOMA exhibitions such as Tutankhamen paralleled my feelings and exposure to religious art in that art attempted to capture the mystery and beauty of the unexplainable or unseen phenomenon of our world. Paired with my interest in sci-fi illustration of the 70’s and contemplation of religious art in church, my work rarely escapes my preoccupation with the mysteries of the natural world that surrounds us and our attempts of explaining our fleeting existence through religious virtues.
For this exhibition, I chose to celebrate artists' work featured in the Besthoff collection and public parks and throughways, I hope to pay tribute to artists whose work has crossed over from patrons to the public realm, further engaging our unique city and poetic way of life.